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Heart of Darkness. Oh, how I tried, and I saw and liked Apocalypse Now, but Conrad's pages and pages of dense, sluggish hard-on for The Life at Sea just broke my spirit. It's the only book I've ever thrown down in sheer disgust, and I've read Atlas loving Shrugged.
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Aug 1, 2008 00:06
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I'm having trouble getting through One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest. I'm considering putting it down, but it seems like a good story, and apparently the movie is really good. Is the ending good enough to warrant finishing it?
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Aug 1, 2008 01:49
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Delicious Sci Fi posted:If this isn't horrible writing I don't know what is: You cherry-pick one passage out of an extensive body of work and use that as an example of horrible writing? It sounds to me more like you just don't understand what McCarthy is saying, so you claim he's a horrible writer instead of acknowledging the fact that he's writing on a different level than your average bestseller. The use of language here is typical of McCarthy - he always describes stuff in that epic-sounding manner, but it's apparent what he's talking about if you stop to think about it for a second: The sound of the men puking is unnatural in that setting since they're riding through the middle of nowhere with no one around. A Gorgon is a monster from Greek mythology that turned people to stone with the power of its gaze. You wouldn't normally stumble on one just chilling in an autumn pool - hence the use of that as an example of something unnatural and "smirking in the eyes of grace". He's not the most accessible writer out there - but that hardly makes him a horrible writer. He's generally considered one of the greatest living American writers, been compared to Faulkner and won the Pulitzer for The Road to say nothing of the fact that he also won awards for All The Pretty Horses (the same book you just ripped on), as noted here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormac_mccarthy#Awards I'm not saying I completely understand McCarthy's work myself - but I don't go around claiming he's a horrible writer simply because I didn't follow everything he's saying.
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Aug 1, 2008 16:35
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Princess Neurotica posted:Heart of Darkness. Oh, how I tried, and I saw and liked Apocalypse Now, but Conrad's pages and pages of dense, sluggish hard-on for The Life at Sea just broke my spirit. It's the only book I've ever thrown down in sheer disgust, and I've read Atlas loving Shrugged. I'm reading Heart Of Darkness right now, and I know what you mean. I've been flying through books lately, fitting 200 pages a day into my work schedule, so I figured this little novella would be a 1-day affair. Day 4 and I'm still in Part II. The story is interesting, but the prose is so dense that I find myself losing focus and end up re-reading sections to make sure I didn't miss anything.
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Aug 1, 2008 16:38
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Encryptic posted:You cherry-pick one passage out of an extensive body of work and use that as an example of horrible writing? It sounds to me more like you just don't understand what McCarthy is saying, so you claim he's a horrible writer instead of acknowledging the fact that he's writing on a different level than your average bestseller. He's not the most accessible writer because he is a horrible writer. Why is the Gorgon in the pool? Why an Autumn pool? What is imperfect and malformed? Is it the same thing that is smirking deep into the eyes of grace? A writer can't just throw around words that sound pretty. That is like lazy poetry in novel form. If you slow down and think about that passage for more than a minute you realize that he is just throwing words around in pseudo-biblical language, like he wants to write like Melville but can't be bothered to do it well. "They caught up and set out each day in the dark before the day yet was and they ate cold meat and biscuit and made no fire."(blood Meridian) Yes please I would love a badly formed sentence. Why would anyone want to read a book written like that? or maybe you would prefer to defend a passage that eulogizes a horse's bowels. "While inside the vaulting of the ribs between his knees the darkly meated heart pumped of who's will and the blood pulsed and the bowels shifted in their massive blue convolutions of who's will and the stout thighbones and knee and cannon and the tendons like flaxen hawsers that drew and flexed and drew and flexed at their articulations of who's will all sheathed and muffled in the flesh and the hooves that stove wells in the morning groundmist and the head turning side to side and the great slavering keyboard of his teeth and the hot globes of his eyes where the world burned." (All the Pretty Horses) Sweet! more badly formatted poetry in the form of the shittiest run on sentence ever produced. If that sentence gets you going you probably need to stop reading seriously and stick to the fantasy stuff. The repetition of Who's Will sounds horrible and seems like a ploy to make you think something more is going on there than what is actually happening. I don't really need to cherry pick bad passages, pretty much all of All the Pretty Horses is one big bad passage. I also won't acknowledge that he is better than the average best seller because he is not, nor do I claim that I bash him because I don't understand him. I bash him because I do understand him and I see through his literary gimmicks for what he really is. It makes me sad that McCarthy has ever compared to Faulkner, at least when someone struggles with Faulkner they will get something meaningful out of it. Struggling with McCarthy will only get you one thing - A headache. Also his awards just means he can fool a panel of judges into thinking that is decent writing.
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Aug 1, 2008 20:45
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Delicious Sci Fi posted:He's not the most accessible writer because he is a horrible writer. I would think it's fairly clear: The sound of them throwing up is unnatural in that setting. The "gorgon in an autumn pool" and the other imagery just drives that point home. It's not just "throwing words around". If you can't read that passage and get some meaning out of it, I don't know what to tell you. Same thing with the horse passage you quoted or any other passage you might care to mention. As far as Blood Meridian goes: Harold Bloom considers it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century. I'm sure he was just taken in by McCarthy's "ability to fool a panel of judges into thinking he's a good writer".  You're entitled to an opinion, but I can't imagine you're going to find many people who agree with you.
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Aug 1, 2008 22:23
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I don't know if the problem is with me or with McCarthy, but I too tend to find his metaphors a bit overwrought.
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Aug 1, 2008 22:38
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Encryptic posted:As far as Blood Meridian goes: Harold Bloom considers it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century. I'm sure he was just taken in by McCarthy's "ability to fool a panel of judges into thinking he's a good writer". I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that Bloom is some sort of infallible authority among the literati, or why one more critic's word would make any difference to DSF.
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Aug 1, 2008 22:59
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Delicious Sci Fi posted:He's not the most accessible writer because he is a horrible writer.
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Aug 2, 2008 00:06
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mystes posted:I didn't know B. R. Myers was on SA. I was just about to post this, and offer my sympathies to Delicious Sci Fi. I really don't know what else to do or say. criptozoid posted:I don't know if the problem is with me or with McCarthy, but I too tend to find his metaphors a bit overwrought. This, I'm fine with. Someone could build an argument around that, and I might disagree with them, yet it's worlds apart from declaring outright that McCarthy is a bad writer. It's a matter of taste, and it doesn't implicitly make the work good or bad. jessecore fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Aug 2, 2008 |
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Aug 2, 2008 00:14
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thegreatyugo posted:I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that Bloom is some sort of infallible authority among the literati, or why one more critic's word would make any difference to DSF.
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Aug 2, 2008 00:33
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trans fat posted:I'm having trouble getting through One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest. Yes. When I read "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" many years ago, I too had trouble with it in the beginning. I don't rightly recall why. About halfway through, it finally started to hold my interest, and the ending is compelling, so I'd say, hang in there.
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Aug 2, 2008 03:04
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thegreatyugo posted:I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that Bloom is some sort of infallible authority among the literati, or why one more critic's word would make any difference to DSF. He's certainly more of an authority on literature than two knuckleheads arguing on the Internet. I definitely don't have the literary background that Bloom does, for one. I didn't mean to imply he's an infallible authority, however - perhaps I should have said that his opinion is worth acknowledging even if you ultimately disagree with it. As it is, I'm going to throw up my hands and accept the fact that this was a dumb argument to begin with. Let's just say that I'm going to agree to disagree with DSF and leave it at that, but it still boggles my mind that anyone would actually consider McCarthy a horrible writer. Hard to read at times, definitely, but horrible is a pretty off-the-loving-wall opinion in this case. If you don't care for his style, that's one thing - but branding him as a horrible writer from the gate just strikes me as close-minded. Encryptic fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Aug 2, 2008 |
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Aug 2, 2008 05:00
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Blindness, Jose Saramago. Jesus, I hate this man's style. I made it 123 pages before putting it down. Maybe somebody will edit the thing and make it readable. It's a shame too, because the premise is pretty cool.
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Aug 2, 2008 23:06
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subpage posted:Blindness, Jose Saramago. I finished this, but it was just sheer stubbornness and not wanting to admit defeat. The story was great, but it was buried under 3 page sentences and 20 page paragraphs, which makes for really horrendous pacing. David Foster Wallace pulls this same poo poo in Infinite Jest, and it just makes reading such a chore.
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Aug 3, 2008 09:04
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I have much less patience with books these days. My stubborn character has allowed me to battle through some incredibly dense pieces - notably Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Q and The Fellowship of the Ring (I really liked the other two), despite nearly giving up on numerous occasions in each case. The funeral in C&P, the random derailing of the story with that little kid in Karamazov and Treebeard proved low points but I battled through. Recently however, I find my attention much more fleeting. I think it may have something to do with burn out - having just graduated and still associating books with massive boredom and stress - but I have put down Don Quixote (funeral, AND a chapter of poetry? Yes please!), Guns, Germs and Steel, and am pretty close to giving up on Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd. I must say I was surprised to see Catch-22 recurring so much in this thread - it's one of my favourites - but I can see how the writing style and sense of humour might irritate some people.
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Aug 4, 2008 01:01
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Agreeing with the Godel, Escher, Bach sentiments. I really enjoyed it for the first couple hundred pages, but then I started thinking, "Jesus I get it already, wrap this thing up" and never finished it. I actually think that I did get a bit out of what I did read, but I feel no compulsion to finish it because I think I pretty much understood the central hypothesis and need no further pontification. Gravity's Rainbow is another book that I enjoyed that I haven't finished. I actually want to finish it, but it's so hard to read (rewarding as I might find it). The prose is deeply moving though, for some reason I still remember the visceral impact of the "gently caress the War" line, so I really should finish it. I think I'll give it a shot after summer exams are done, when I have a really good reading chair and a good quiet place. On the other hand, I never finished The Fountainhead because it's crap.
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Aug 4, 2008 03:33
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mystes posted:I didn't know B. R. Myers was on SA. You're no fun.
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Aug 4, 2008 04:08
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Business Octopus posted:Gravity's Rainbow is another book that I enjoyed that I haven't finished. I actually want to finish it, but it's so hard to read (rewarding as I might find it). The prose is deeply moving though, for some reason I still remember the visceral impact of the "gently caress the War" line, so I really should finish it. I think I'll give it a shot after summer exams are done, when I have a really good reading chair and a good quiet place.
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Aug 4, 2008 05:28
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I've beaten my head in on the pages of The Windup Bird Chronicle and having reached the 2/3 point, have said gently caress it and set it aside for less toilsome reading. I realize this destroys any hopes I could have for impressing the people on this forum but goddamnit, that book was not enjoyable to me.
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Aug 4, 2008 07:11
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Neo_Reloaded posted:I figured this little novella would be a 1-day affair. Day 4 and I'm still in Part II. The story is interesting, but the prose is so dense that I find myself losing focus and end up re-reading sections to make sure I didn't miss anything. Heh. And I'm lazy and impatient, which explains why I couldn't do it.
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Aug 5, 2008 18:20
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Great Expectations. Seriously, screw Pirrip.
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Aug 5, 2008 21:39
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Stephen King's It. I only made it through halfway. Why? Basically it was way too long of a novel. There is no loving way this book had to be over 1100 pages in length. There is way too much detail freefully thrown onto paper, regardless of its significance and importance. Stephen King could have chopped this mammoth down to 600 pages while still establishing engaging characters and breathing life into the town of Derry. But everytime I thought the storyline was moving along I'd have to wade through more useless (though well-written) detail. I love this author's short stories but my first attempt at reading one of his novels failed.
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Aug 5, 2008 23:18
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Funkadelic Behemoth posted:There is way too much detail freefully thrown onto paper, regardless of its significance and importance. This is a major fault of King's. John Irving is also guilty of this.
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Aug 5, 2008 23:35
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I am struggling through Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett. I find the topic of the book fascinating, as I had just previously read The God Delusion, it is just Dennett's treatment of the subject: he's very, very particular about what precisely he is putting forth, and how he frames his question. I would expect nothing less from a philosopher -- or scientist, for that matter -- but at the same time he writes it in such a way that is almost tiring to read. Perhaps I am unfairly contrasting it to The God Delusion, however. Breaking the Spell appears to have been published before Dawkins' take on the same subject -- in fact, he quotes or references Dennett's book a lot throughout his own -- and I think it may be more rigorous in the sense that it might be the first book of its kind (to suggest and look at the idea of religion being a natural phenomenon) whereas Dawkins is working with his source of Dennett's book plus other things. I could be horribly wrong too, of course! In any case, I'm on Part II now and I'll be damned if I don't finish it before the school-year kicks in!
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Aug 10, 2008 22:28
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God Created the Integers by Stephen Hawking. I like math. I like Stephen Hawking. I thought they would go together well. Unfortunately, the first part of the book is straight geometry proofs. One after another after another... it was torture. Maybe the chapters to follow had the mathematical insight I was looking for, but I'll never know. Euclid shut me down so fast and so early in the book, it never had a chance. Oh and Atlas Shrugged. But I think that's implied at this point.
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Aug 11, 2008 05:43
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NickGarvey posted:God Created the Integers by Stephen Hawking. Didn't Hawking himself say something about every equation in a book halving the sales? I think it's in the introduction to A Brief History of Time.
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Aug 11, 2008 06:09
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Count me down as another who got about 200 pages into Gravity's Rainbow and had to put it down. Just when I think I have a grasp of what's going on suddenly there's a giant adenoid or something and I have to reread the last 20 pages and I just get frustrated and lose interest. It bugs me, because I really like the idea of Pynchon's novels--the comic misadventures and zany conspiracies--but the fact that none of the characters his books are grounded in any way to reality kind of irks me in the practice. I might give it another shot one of these days though. As for everyone arguing about Cormac McCarthy, he's definitely prone to the occasional overwrought paragraph, especially in his early stuff when he's trying to write like a Biblical Melville, but I find it hard to believe that people had trouble with The Road. I mean, it's basically a Steven King book with slightly elevated language and without the magical retarded child. I found it a pretty quick and effortless read, myself.
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Aug 11, 2008 10:00
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Icefields by Thomas Wharton was the most frustrating read ever. The pace of the book threw me off and I didn't actually feel anything from reading it. It was more trying to figure out WHY the author was saying that and WHY this character was doing this and WHO the hell is this person and WHAT are they doing. I eventually had to just set it aside and it never got picked up again except to return to the library. It's only the second book I've ever done this to, the first being The Fellowship of the Rings which I have never gotten past chapter five or so, due to the detailed explaination of the grass.
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Aug 12, 2008 19:36
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Bug Bill Murray posted:Count me down as another who got about 200 pages into Gravity's Rainbow and had to put it down. Just when I think I have a grasp of what's going on suddenly there's a giant adenoid or something and I have to reread the last 20 pages and I just get frustrated and lose interest. It bugs me, because I really like the idea of Pynchon's novels--the comic misadventures and zany conspiracies--but the fact that none of the characters his books are grounded in any way to reality kind of irks me in the practice. I might give it another shot one of these days though.
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Aug 12, 2008 21:33
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vulgarghost posted:Dostoevsky was awesome to me with Notes From the Underground but after Raskolnikov kills the old woman and the pre-arranged marriage crap starts, Crime and Punishment was unbearable. You should pick it up again. Luzhin is one of the most memorably devious villains I've ever read in a book. The rest of it isn't action-packed like the start, but it's all about the paranoia and suspicion, and Raskolnikovs slow realisation of the consequences of his actions. If you didn't like the characters, that's understandable. I was interested in the fates of Razumikhin and the Marmeladovs, so I didn't find it a drag to get through those bits. Tacostein posted:Great Expectations. Seriously, screw Pirrip. What? Why? Entropic posted:Seconding this. The Gormenghast miniseries was fantastic, but after finally finishing the first book of the trilogy I had no desire to pick up the next one. So much pointless plodding description, and it's not even like Tolkien where the description is at least interesting and full of neat poems. I'd say that 'Tolkien' is harsh. I was reminded much more of Dickens (the odd names, the continued metaphors), and I find his prose beautifully descriptive. I even prefer his imagery to Dickens, on the whole. A lot of the time it is very indulgent, though, and he often fixates so closely on small details, and in such verbose length, that you can't get a very good picture of a place. But I'd prefer densely descriptive to Philip K Dick, any day. However, you can't say that, in Gormenghast, the scenes where Steerpike is being hunted around the flooded rooftops, or when Titus, Flay and Prunsquallor are tailing him, are plodding or that the description gets in the way of the sequence of events. I thought that Peake had a great instinct for when to paint a picture and when to keep the suspense up. That miniseries was pretty good, as well. I bought the DVD recently and was impressed with how they interpreted the books. Rhys Meyers looks good as Steerpike, but is a pretty boring actor, though. mystes posted:That's interesting. I love the Gormenghast books but I found Tolkien's poems insufferable. Yo 
Retinend fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Aug 13, 2008 |
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Aug 13, 2008 02:03
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Bandit Queen posted:I couldn't finish Stranger in a Strange Land; it was dull and I hated how most of the female characters were there to fill stereotypically feminine roles. I concur. And I read a drat lot of Heinlein when I was a kid. Mad Monk posted:Right now I'm plodding slowly through Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, I pick it up and read a few chapters or so between other books. I like the story but am having problems with the BIG words and the lists that are in the book, he'll start listing off something like different occults and such and it will go on for a full page and a half. I have no trouble keeping up with the characters or the plot but my god, the language and writing style makes this a difficult read. I was stymied by Foucault's Pendulum shortly after reading The Name of the Rose. The Name of the Rose was a page-turner. I churned through that in a day or two. Entirely too much NOTHING HAPPENING put me off of Foucault's Pendulum both times I've attempted it. Stark Fist posted:I view it as less of a regular novel, and more of a collection of work by Tolkien, and you have to appreciate each aspect of his writing to enjoy it. No, you really don't. You can skip past all that crap and not feel like you've missed anything. The songs and poems especially, since it's easy to see where you can skip forward. I never would have made it through those books (twice!) if I hadn't, I'm sure. And I don't feel any poorer for not taking it as a whole. Leonard Pine posted:Lord of The Rings. Two hundred pages of hobbit singing was quite enough, thank you. If you ever try it again, feel free to flip a few pages forward whenever you start getting that feeling. Trust me, you're not missing anything. The story will still make sense, it will still feel like he's created his little world. There's a reason almost none of that was included in the movies, and it isn't JUST length. Sidmae posted:I also read Battlefield Earth when I was 12! I read it twice in one summer! Although the movie is horrible I thought the novel was great. Nothing written by or attributed to Hubbard is actually good, and only Battlefield Earth and Final Blackout are tolerable. I read it when I was 10, at the recommendation of my father. I can't believe I plowed through all that crap. Roctor posted:I cannot bring myself to read the last two after powering through God Emperor of Dune. Same here, except I quit about a quarter of the way through God Emperor. flippygrip meatbio posted:The Prince by Machiavelli. Not that it was terrible, I just think all the names of cities and kings/emperors/rulers really got in the way of me enjoying it. You are not the intended audience. The intended audience have all been dead since a few decades after it was written. I think it could seriously benefit from being rewritten in a more generic fashion. Keep the meat of the arguments in place, but either modernize or otherwise replace the examples with more timeless ones. It would be so much more accessible.
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Aug 13, 2008 04:45
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For some reason I cannot get though "The Waste Lands" (The Dark Tower, Book 3) by Stephen King. I powered though the first two books in the series, and enjoyed them quite a bit, but every time I pick up the third book I put it back down, or find something else to read shortly after.
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Aug 13, 2008 21:08
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MorleyDotes posted:For some reason I cannot get though "The Waste Lands" (The Dark Tower, Book 3) by Stephen King. I powered though the first two books in the series, and enjoyed them quite a bit, but every time I pick up the third book I put it back down, or find something else to read shortly after. Book 4 is better, but if you ignore that one, it is a steady downward trend in the other 6 books.
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Aug 13, 2008 23:07
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MorleyDotes posted:For some reason I cannot get though "The Waste Lands" (The Dark Tower, Book 3) by Stephen King. I powered though the first two books in the series, and enjoyed them quite a bit, but every time I pick up the third book I put it back down, or find something else to read shortly after. It gets pretty good once they reach Lud; you wouldn't miss all that much if you skimmed the scenes of Roland Eddie and Susannah wandering in woods. After the non-stop action of book two the third one does kind of slow the pace down. Also, if you're having trouble with Waste Lands there's no way in hell you're getting through Wizard and Glass--it's like 800 pages of slow teenage romance, with a fight or two here and there.
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Aug 14, 2008 21:50
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Lord of the Rings on the second read through. I first read it when I was 14 and thought it was pretty good. Not awesome or anything probably because I'd read Pratchett first. Every second page I was thinking: "Oh! So that's what that joke was about." Anyway, after the movies came out I decided the re-read it and it was just incredibly dull. So I skipped ahead to the memorable parts, but they turned out to be only slightly less dull. Also, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I actually did slog through it eventually, but only because it's an SF classic. Definitely would have put it down otherwise. It's like Heinlein wrote a story, then wrote a summary of the story, padded it with a few anecdotes and published the result. And the whole boyscout tone might work when you're writing about boyscouts (like Farmer in the Sky) but when it's about pushing someone out of an airlock... 
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Aug 14, 2008 22:55
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göebels, Escher, Bach, an eternal golden braid just got too heavy for me. I trudged on until they had two pages filled with some sort of mathematics/programming/recurrence thing. After one year of university, though, I feel ready to try again.
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Aug 14, 2008 23:25
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The Mad Hatter posted:göebels, Escher, Bach, an eternal golden braid just got too heavy for me. I trudged on until they had two pages filled with some sort of mathematics/programming/recurrence thing. Though if Hofstadter went crazy and wrote a book about how Nazism relates to fundamental principles of consciousness it might make for an entertaining read.
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Aug 15, 2008 05:55
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Entropic posted:Preeeeetty sure you you mean Gödel, not Goebbels. The basic premiss for the book would be; "The state tells me I am, therefor I am". Yea, I meant Göedel. Knew something rang out of tune when I wrote it the first time. Thanks for correcting.
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Aug 15, 2008 09:47
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Princess Neurotica posted:Heart of Darkness. Oh, how I tried, and I saw and liked Apocalypse Now, but Conrad's pages and pages of dense, sluggish hard-on for The Life at Sea just broke my spirit. It's the only book I've ever thrown down in sheer disgust, and I've read Atlas loving Shrugged. I haven't read it yet, but isn't it just under 100 pages? It must have been pretty bad. Retinend fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Aug 15, 2008 |
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Aug 15, 2008 16:08
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